Hello! So, I’ve been at university for two weeks now, but it feels a lot longer! I’m choosing to put this down to settling in well and getting used to how things run here. I made sure my room was easy to settle into. I’ve got posters and pictures all over the wall and a new bed spread and other little things to just make the room feel like home.
I guess one of the big differences between going to university in the UK and in the US is that the majority of places don’t have a roommate system. I think this took a lot of pressure off the transition to living where I do now, as I knew that I would be able to just have MY room that I can lock the world out of if I really need to!
Luckily, I have made some really lovely friends here but waited a little while to mention my Tourette to them. I knew that once I ticced I would have to say something, so I waited until someone said, “What was that?” to say “Oh, I have Tourette Syndrome.” Nobody asked any prying questions, they pretty much just accepted it and carried on with the conversation. To me, that is a perfect reaction.
I was wondering how my tics would be once I was with a new bunch of people, and for the first few days they were virtually nonexistent until I got back into my room and went to bed. As I have started to feel more comfortable living here, my tics have been coming out in full force when I’m with my new friends and only in a very minor way in lectures. But I have been experiencing some more violent tics, comprising mainly of hitting myself in the face. That’s a bit annoying, but luckily so far I haven’t hit myself hard enough to make a mark!
So far my time at university has been great (apart from a small case of “Freshers Flu” this week!), and I hope that with my new timetable I will be able to find a slot to start posting blogs a lot more frequently!
